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If REPOSE is anything to go by, the future of space exploration is gonna be bleak. Not only do we have to contend with murderous aliens or the manifestations of our own psyche, or whatever, but we also have to deal with a more humdrum evil: corporatism. The exploration of space handled by faceless companies. A world where we can gaze upon the vast infinite reaches of space and still have to worry about where our next paycheque is coming from. It’s depressing and rather scary.
Which suits REPOSE and its faceless company well. As you can see from the screenshots, it’s dripping with style. The aesthetics are striking; it’s something brutal. It seeps into the entirety of REPOSE. It’s a game without time for anything else, really. Which has its good and bad points. The good side is that, chances are, you’ll never really play anything else like REPOSE. The downside is that you never really play REPOSE to begin with.
Welcome To The Company
REPOSE‘s central premise is that we’re an astronaut, who’s started a new job at [the company]. A faceless corporation tasking us with retrieving oxygen tanks from former astronauts. If you get a sort of spooky premonition from looking at them, then rest assured that’s entirely intended. Either way, as you start collecting them, a former employee begins to contact you in your dreams, urging you to descend deeper. He also warns you about the giant tentacle monsters, and even gives you a gun. Nice chap.
Picking through REPOSE‘s spooky world is equal parts horror and puzzle game. The key lies in the ‘energy’ mechanic, which corresponds to how many steps you can take before you die and respawn. Usually, it’s just enough to get from one bed to another, so you have to count your steps and do a bit of trial-and-error to get to the end. The wonderful, nightmare-like aesthetics make finding the right path a challenge, especially as you need to factor in enemies. Swinging the axe and firing the gun all use energy, so you need perfect steps to get through. It’s a mechanic with lots of promise.
Straight And Narrow
Unfortunately, this mechanic is also my biggest problem with REPOSE. See, the 1-bit artstyle is fantastic, and there’s a great soundtrack to pump out the vibes. The world is dripping with menace. We just don’t get to experience it. The limited movement keeps us staring at our feet. It punishes exploration and the singular, obvious path through the world kept me focused more on the mechanics than the atmosphere. It was just step, swing, shoot, repeat. There’s potential in limited movement, but it needs a big sprawling world for us to map out. Something unexpected to stumble on, that isn’t just a ladder to the next area.
As a result, REPOSE is brutally short. Main credits can be reached in about two hours. For me, that’s too short to really immerse myself in a world. It’s irritating because the story has a lot of interesting notes. This ‘planet’ we’re on is bizarre, formed of discarded scrap and full of wires transmitting unknown data. It’s a magnet for everything forgotten in space, and the people living on it aren’t much different. The issue is that we spend so little time there, getting invested so little, that the big reveal at the end lacked the punch it needed.
REPOSE – Fantastic Aesthetics, Limited Gameplay
As it stands, REPOSE works better as an experience than as a game. The claustrophobic corridors full of wires leading to God knows where, and the black and white nature of the artstyle makes everything feel very oppressive. Its issue is that its gameplay seems to be harking back to an older school, but not in a satisfying way. The use of save codes, for instance, which is something that should remain in the past. But crucially, it has brought back limited movement but not given us any reason to really map things out. You’ll find the right path on your second or third attempt.
The result is that we’re whisked through this world before we can really get to know it, or its characters. Worlds like these are best explored at our own pace, but there’s barely anything off the beaten track in REPOSE. As a consequence, it’s relatively weak in both the horror and puzzle department. Its great graphics keep its head above water, but sadly REPOSE struggles to marry its stellar aesthetics with interesting gameplay.
